THE NEW NORTH
Being Some Account of a Woman's Journey through Canada to the Arctic
BY AGNES DEANS CAMERON
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, JESSIE ANDERSON CAMERON
AND
TO ALL THOSE WHO TRY TO LIVE OUT HER SIMPLE RULE:"WE MUST JUST TRY TO DO THE VERY BEST WE CAN"
PREFACE
It is customary to write a preface. Mine shall be short. Out of a fullheart, I wish to thank all the splendid people of the North who, bygiving me so freely information and photographs, and chapters out oftheir own lives, have facilitated the writing of this story. For theirspontaneous kindness to me and mine no acknowledgment that I can heremake is adequate. What we feel most strongly we cannot put into words.
AGNES DEANS CAMERON.
August, 1909.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG
The Mendicants leave Chicago—The invisible parallel of 49 where theeagle perches and makes amorous eyes at the beaver—Union Jack floats onan ox-cart—A holy baggage-room—Winnipeg, the Buckle of theWheat-Belt—The trapper and the doctor—Mrs. Humphry Ward speaks—BoyMakers of Empire—The vespers of St. Boniface
CHAPTER II: WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING
The 1,000-mile wheat-field—Calgary-in-the-Foothills—Edmonton, the endof steel—The Brains of a Trans-Continental—Browning on theSaskatchewan—East Londoners in tents—Our outfit—A Waldorf-Astoria inthe wilderness—The lonely cross of the Galician—Height of Land—Sergeant Anderson, R.N.W.M.P., the sleuth of Lesser Slave
CHAPTER III: ATHABASCA LANDING
Athabasca Landing, the Gateway of the North—English gives place toCree—Limit of the Dry Martini—Will the rabbits run?—The womanprinter—Hymn-books by hand in the Cree syllabic—Baseball evenhere—Rain and reminiscences—The World's Oldest Trust
CHAPTER IV: DOWN THE ATHABASCA ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE MILES TO GRAND RAPIDS
"Farewell, Nistow!"—The rainy deck of a "sturgeon head" under atarpaulin—Drifting by starlight—The wild geese overhead—Forty-footgas-spout at the Pelican—The mosquito makes us blood-brothers—Fourdays on our Robinson Crusoe Island in the swirlingAthabasca—Nomenclature of the North—Sentinels of the Silence
CHAPTER V: NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS
The Go-Quick-Her takes the bit in her mouth—Mallards on thehalf-shell—We set the Athabascan Thames afire—Sturgeon-head breaks herback on the Big Cascade—Fort McMurray—A stranded argosy, wreckage onthe beach—Miss Christine Gordon, the Free Trader—A land flowing withcoal and oil and gas and tar, timber and lime
CHAPTER VI: FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT
Old Fort Chipewyan—In the footsteps of Mackenzie and Sir JohnFranklin—Sir John turns parson—Grey Nuns and brown babies—Where grewthe prize wheat of the Philadelphia Centennial—Militant missionaries